Mena put her twig hands on her hips. “More importantly, what are you doing in my forest? Me being a tree and all. How dare you build this smelly house in here anyway. It’s a pigsty.”

“Again, with the cerdophobic slurs, snoik?” Pigchard narrowed his beady eyes. “I know it’s you, witchy girl. I’d recognize that chirpy voice anywhere.”

“Drat rats!” Mena threw her heavy tree trunk off her. The pig-man loomed ever closer to her with his cauldron and Mena blew a whistle.

Janus, Chad and Ashlan came waddling out, also hidden inside their tree disguises. The pig-man turned around nervously, his mouth dropping below his snout.

“Hah!” Mena exclaimed, pointing a finger at him and gloating. “Treeinforcements!”

Pigchard looked around as the three trees aimed to crush him beneath their splintered wood. He let out a piggish shriek and dove onto the ground. “I surrender…snoik.”

“Now,” Mena said, putting her hands on her hips and standing above the cowering swine. “Tell us… how come you betrayed us and threw us in jail?”

Pigchard peered out from behind his hoofs. “The green ones…snoik…two women with bright green faces—one quite fat and dumpy, but the other strangely lovely—arrived and warned the king about you.”

“Bubbel and Karen?” Ashlan asked from behind her trunk. “They really got the jump on us. But how?”

Mena continued in interrogation mode, “So you trusted two green strangers? Did your piggy mama ever tell you not to talk to people outside the local trough?”

“But I had to do it,” Pigchard groveled in the dirt “It took the king’s attention off me, so I could make off with the rest of my ingredients.”

“Leave it to a cowardly swine,” Mena began, clearly relishing her new dominant demeanor. “To save his own hide…Now tell us, who or what are you attempting to bring back?”

PIgchard leaped towards the cauldron, covering it up with his whole body. ”Cook me in the frying pan, but I’ll never tell you. You truly are despicable as you are bright and colorful.”

“Mena,” Janus said gently, as the young witch put her foot on the pig’s curly tail. “Perhaps you should relax.”

Mena put her hands behind her head and giggled. “Sorry, I’ve always wanted to act like Caligari when she’s lectures us in detention. Guess I got carried away.”

“Pigchard,” Janus asked, removing her tree trunk, her friends following suit too. “Is the Ghost Writer, Maggie McGill really your daughter?”

Pigchard turned around and gave a piggy squeal from the top of his cauldron. “Snoik…Ghost Writer? This is my daughter’s plot. I don’t know anything about a Ghost Writer.”

Janus put her spindly fingers together, she approached Pigchard and knelt before him. “Pigchard, I am a reaper, so deaths are very important to me. If it’s not too painful, can you please recount for me what happened to your daughter?”

Pichard trembled. His black piggy eyes shimmered, but slowly he turned around and looked her directly in the eyes. Mena had to admit, for the very manifestation of death, Janus had a way with people…and pigs.

“As you can plainly see,” Pigchard said, finally sitting up. “I am a Pigmalian…snoik. The people of this world don’t like us and we don’t like them…except in one case—the woman who would become my wife.”

A fondness shined in the pig-man’s eyes, but it wasn’t one of lust, but deep resounding respect. “Pigmalians are quite valued for their hides, for we make bacon far better than any ordinary pig, snoik. It was considered ‘good sport’ since we and the humans despised each other.”

Pigchard held out his leg, to show some intense scarring around his hoof. “But I had found myself in one of the human’s traps…It seemed I was a goner, it had clamped my hoof. It wasn’t until my eyes fell upon the kindest woman, that I had hope.”

Mena gathered closer with her friends, listening intently to the pig-man’s tale. “She released me, and told me, it was not fair for creatures as sentient as us, to become the meals for others. She even took me to this very house and cared for my wounded leg. It was then…snoik…I started looking at humans a little differently.”

Pigchard held his hand out to the house where he and his wife resided. “Molly, lived far away from the people. She did not like how those with magic ink wrote themselves to great heights, leaving the rest to struggle. Instead, she decided to live apart from it all…snoik…in the forest. It helped her grow closer with the creatures… and she was fascinated by all of Pig-kind, especially the way we stood on two feet and talked like her.”

Mena caught a glimpse of Janus and Ashlan, they had both focused entirely on Pigchard, his words and his body language.

“And when it was time for me to go, after my leg healed, I told her, I didn’t want to go—I wanted to stay with her.”—the pig-man’s eyes sparkled brightly from within the dark forest—”And she told me, ‘why not, I was the best company she’d ever had.’”

“I guess someone wanted to get porked,” Chad snickered, before Ashlan elbowed him in his exposed ribs.

“Can it, cad,” she snapped.

Pigchard continued undeterred. “We said our own marriage rites, half in Pigmalese and half in human tongue and wed beneath the forest moon. A few years passed, and Maggie came into the world, a human…snoik…she had her mother’s brunette hair, dark mole and small eyes but with a snout and curly tail. It was the happiest moment of my life, but there was a flash of guilt in my wife’s eyes.”

“What happened with her?” Mena asked, and Pigchard gave a sigh.

“She realized Maggie might not be happy living far away from everyone else like we were. She might get curious of the outside world, but she could never enter either world, whether it be the Pigmalian or the human world. It was quite a predicament…snoik…”

Pigchard looked down at the ground, his eyes focused on Maggie’s plot. “Unfortunately, my wife would never get to see our daughter grow. When we were out in the forest gathering fruit for our daughter and, a tribe of Pigmalian that particularly despised humans caught her. The leader, the Archhog of Pigminton took one look at her and called our love a betrayal of all of Pigmalia.”

“They didn’t…” Mena squeaked nervously.

The pig-man snorted sadly. “They called it a forbidden love between a pigmalian and a bacon eater and put her to death right in front of my eyes”—Pigchard covered his eyes with his hoofs. “I was branded an exile, never to return again to Pigminton.”

Mena’s eyes watered a little. She never knew the greatest forbidden love wouldn’t be in one of her romance books, but between a pig-man and a human woman, but sometimes the truest love was found in the most unusual of places.

“I returned to my daughter,” Pigchard said, “She was too small to even comprehend what happened. But I vowed never to allow her to leave the safety of the woods ever again.”

Janus placed a consoling hand on Pigchard as he wept into his hooves. “But…what became of your daughter?”

Pigchard cried for a minute, before removing his hoof from his eyes. “At first, I raised her like any other child. Telling her about fairy tales, raising her to be big and strong and teaching her all I knew. But eventually, she began to wonder—spurred on by the fairy tales on what lay outside.”

There was a forlorn expression on his face, as Pigchard looked towards his daughter’s grave. “It was only when I discovered her writing, did I truly make the wrong decision for her…”

“What was it?” Ashlan, Mena and Janus all asked.

“Fairy tales… snoik,” Pigchard said, “Tales where she was the snout-nosed queen who ruled a fair and noble kingdom and everyone lived in peace with each other.”

The pig-man shook his head with remorse. “It got the better of me, and one day, when she had blossomed into a young woman, I gave her a choice…go off into this wild world…or remain with me in safety…”—Pigchard turned his head away—"She unfortunately, chose the latter….I should have told her about her mother…”

“And what became of her?” Mena asked, “How did she fare in the world?”

Pigchard’s gaze returned to the three girls and Chad, a grave sorrow in his eyes. “Alas…snoik…I do not know. I remained in this hovel out of fear for being persecuted by the humans. The next time I saw her…was when the city birds told me that she was executed for a crime against the Ink Dynasty.”

“In the cover of night, I recovered her body,” Pigchard wailed. “And I took my daughter home.”

A harrowing look came over Pigchard as he stood up. “That night, a rain of jet-black ink spilled over the land stealing every color from it. Perhaps it was revenge for my daughter’s murder. She does not rest easily for what had happened to her…or her mother…”

“Somehow,” Janus said, rising up and bearing the prognosis to her friends. “I think Maggie became the Ghost Writer and now she’s writing bad endings from beyond the grave.”

Mena, Ashlan and Janus exchanged nervous glances in complete silence. The Ghost Writer might truly have a reason forvengeance. But they had yet to discover why and what for.

“Is she?” Pigchard squeaked with a sense of urgency and picked up his cauldron. “Is that what became of my dear Maggie? We must revive her then…It’s the only way we can bring peace to this land.”

Mena looked at May and Janus. “Do you think he should?”

Janus, the specialist of life and death bore a serious expression. “It’s worth a shot. If anything, the magillies can soothe her restless spirit.”

Pigchard placed his cauldron on the ground, beginning to heat it up with pigmagic. It bubbled with thick goopy sounds as he placed the flandrake inside of it. Everyone gazed intently at it, hoping that it would bring good to the kingdom once again. Mena crossed her fingers and tried to cross her toes too. The story had moved her, and she only wanted the best for poor Pigchard and his family.

Next, Pigchard dropped a purple leaf of stunkweed into the brew. It erupted like a potent fart, causing everyone to wince, and pull their outfits over their nose. “Gotta put more in…snoik… I know it’s vile. I gotta a bigger nose than all of you.”

Pigchard placed another piece of stunkweed inside of the cauldron. Gaseous purple smoke billowed as the fumes traveled up into everyone’s noses. Mena was reeling. It smelled like May’s Magical P.E. gym socks after she ran laps around the gymnasium.

“We must put the whole thing in,” PIgchard said, his eyes twitching.

“Why didn’t you do that to start with bacon boy!” Ashlan snapped, before Pigchard glared at her over the slur.

He dropped the rest in, and everyone was washed with purple fog. It was so thick they couldn’t see in front of them anymore. A deep voice grumbled deep within in. “A-ha!”

“Maggie?” Pigchard cried out. “Maggie is that you?”

The fog cleared. Standing behind them was an army of tribal pigmalians armed with spears and magical staffs. An enormous pink hog with a mohawk, huge tusks, giant bulging white eyes with black pupils and an enormous mace cleared the way between his peons.

“Wa-hah-hah,” he laughed in a guttural voice. “Look what we have here!” He was muscular and giant black tattoos stretched all over his veiny arms.

Pigchard squealed in fear. “War-Hog!”

“Correct Piggly-Wiggly-Pigchard,” War-Hog laughed, causing Pigchard’s allies to gasp.

“You know this slab of pork?” Ashlan asked caustically.

“He was in my Pigsycal Education class,” Pigchard shuddered. “He always got top marks, while I got voted most likely to become bacon.”

“And nothing’s changed,” War-Hog laughed. “Your vile stunkweed stew led us here. I advise you and your bacon eater friends surrender or else you’ll have to deal with our fearsome martial arts. We are all masters of Swine-Fu.”